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28 comments on “Odd this”

” no roles for black actors in period dramas like Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife.”

Wow. Imagine that.

And if she were to be offered a period authentic role for a black actor she’d probably decry it as racist anyway.

People rightly decry Hollywood shoe-horning a white dude into every foreign period piece and fantasy movie as nothing more than pandering to an idiot audience. They freak out about blackface and non-transgender actors taking transgender character roles.

Why would shoe-horning an anacronistic role just to have a black actor be in any way different from the above.

I do wonder if secretly the British like such shows because they don’t have black roles, or rather because they reflect the world the British like to imagine themselves in, i.e. Entirely white middle/upper class.

It’s like Mad Men, set a show in the 60s and suddenly you can bypass rules about glamourising smoking on TV.

I think we are going to see a lot more of this, also because many plots come to an abrupt end with the invention of the smart phone.

The Vale of York/North Yorkshire of the the 20s/30s where Downton is setwas monolithically white. It still is, pretty much (curry house in Thirsk perhaps). There were no black people there. This isn’t about them.

I also note how monolithically white the Norway of ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ was. Bastards

JuliaM, Thandi moans about being told to appear topless yet appeared to be perfectly happy parading around stark naked in Westworld.. Depends whether being topless in a “B” movie is not as good for one’s career as being completely naked in a prime time series alongside Sir Anthony Hopkins I suppose.

She is an aging actress now well-started on the down side of the hill. She has been the female lead in a number of “A”-list-ish Hollywood films . But they were mostly bad, “Mission Impossible 2” being prob the biggest. Shame it was bloody awful and the weakest of the series. She was also in a truly terrible remake of “Charade” called “The Truth about Charlie” which was so bad I spent most of it wondering if it was an attempt at a spoof but someone had forgotten to put the jokes in the script. Regardless of her colour Audrey Hepburn she ain’t.

Ms Newton was certainly pretty when younger. She was actually quite stunning in MI2. Having seen, well, most of her in Westworld I am not sure I would bother these days.

Added to which she has a history of b!tching about men who gave her work and seem to have tried their luck in a mild way. What she calls sexual assault.

So frankly who cares? The obvious solution is to send her back to her native Zambia where she can get all the Black (well, Black-ish) roles she likes. Why do we let these people into the country in the first place?

Besides, she can still do the occasional Robin Hood film. As we all know Britain was full of wise elderly Black men back then so she ought to be a shoe-in for Marion.

I was watching a BBC4 things about the Norman Invasion a few days ago and Duke William’s ambassador was a black man. I spent most of the programme Googling trying to work out what evidence there was for black people in England and Normandy in the 11th century.

As the grave of a family of Chinese traders has been discovered in 1st century London ruins, it would be more historically accurate for William’s ambassador to have been Chinese.

Like 99% of people lucky enough to become millionaires playing dress up she earned that money largely by being pretty. ‘Sexism’ paid for her house.

Re: UK period drama, in a few years non-white actors will be playing all sorts of historically unfeasible roles as the ‘colourblind’ casting favoured by the Globe and National Theatre becomes effectively compulsory*.

Sadly many of the people here and at places like Samizdata who claim to be against the machinations of socialism (but who roll over and accept every reality-defying nonsense of the left) will say “well it’s fiction anyway” and tell Ecksy he’s a mental for getting angry about it.

*white actors playing non-white will still be frowned on of course (not that I have a problem with this; Anthony Hopkins blacking up for Othello was daft, but it should work both ways)

It’s rubbish anyway. There are quite often black actors portraying roles in times when there would have been no black people in this country. The most recent example I can think of was in the BBC drama-documentary of 1066: A Year to Conquer

BraveFart – “She is pretty and has a good body, but has an unattractively aggressive attitude.”

Well that seems a little harsh. She was a very pretty girl who has made a living out of looking pretty and reading the odd line, but who is now losing her looks and so her career in decline. She is not taking it well and is reacting by desperate attention seeking. She has assumed men would listen to her because she is so clever, as opposed to wanting to sleep with her. And now they do not want to sleep with her, they do not want to listen to her either and her response is to up the noise to keep what attention she still has.

It is tragic really. If a woman only has her looks, what is she to do when they fade? Ms Newton seems to have spent no time acquiring any other accomplishments that might make her attractive. And, as I have said, men basically have no interest in women they do not want to sleep with any more than eight year old boys have any interest in eight year old girls. She has been poorly advised but at least she was sensible enough to marry and have some children.

“She also has a slightly simian face”

Well, I like her face. Or what it was. It does seem that White people tend to like Black faces more the less Black they are. Halle Berry for instance is Black but not, you know, Black Black. Still Black men don’t much like Black looking women either. Virtually every Black man with options marries someone significantly lighter than him, if not White (or occasionally Asian).